Matthias Falkner

Tim Szigeti, CCIE No. 9794, is a principal technical marketing engineer within the Cisco Enterprise Networking Business (ENB) team. In this role, he collaborates with customers, the field, engineering, Cisco IT, and third-party technology partners to drive the development of industry-leading network analytics solutions. In his more than 20 years with Cisco, Tim has authored/co-authored five generations of Cisco QoS Design Guides, four Cisco Press books, an IETF standard (RFC 8325), and multiple patents. Additionally, Tim has been inducted into the Cisco Distinguished Speaker Hall of Fame Elite, representing the Top 1 percent of Cisco speakers of all time.

Outside of Cisco, Tim’s passion is on-track performance driving; as such, you may at times catch a glimpse of him taking corners at high speeds on the spectacular Sea-to-Sky Highway between his hometown of Vancouver and Whistler, British Columbia.

Additional information on Tim can be found on the Cisco Innovators website in the feature story “Cisco Innovators: Tim Szigeti,” at https://newsroom.cisco.com/featurecontent?type=webcontent&articleId=1845902.

Dave Zacks is a distinguished technical marketing engineer within the Cisco ENB team, focused on network architectures and fabrics, network hardware and ASIC design, switching, wireless, and the many and diverse technologies under the enterprise networking umbrella. Dave is based in Vancouver, Canada, and has been with Cisco for 19 years.

Prior to his employment with Cisco, Dave traces his roots in computing to 1979, and has been involved in the datacomm and networking industry since 1985.

Dave is a Cisco Live Distinguished Speaker, having scored in the top 10 percent of all speakers at Cisco Live events worldwide as rated by the attendees. In addition, Dave is recognized as one of only a handful of such speakers to earn the Cisco Live Distinguished Speaker Elite designation, an honor awarded to speakers who have achieved Cisco Live Distinguished Speaker status ten times or more (Dave’s total is currently 15).

In addition to his abiding focus on data communications, Dave maintains a deep and broad interest in many additional topic areas, including (but not limited to) particle and quantum physics, astrophysics, biology, genetics, chemistry, history, mathematics, cryptology, and many other topics. Dave has a special passion for rocketry, aeronautics, space travel, and advanced aircraft and spacecraft design, engineering, and operation.

Additional background on Dave can be reviewed on the Cisco Innovators website in the feature story “Cisco Innovators: Dave Zacks,” at https://newsroom.cisco.com/featurecontent?type=webcontent&articleId=1851941.

Dr. Matthias Falkner is a distinguished technical marketing engineer within the Cisco ENB team. He currently focuses on the evolution of enterprise and service provider network architectures, and in particular on end-to-end architecture solutions involving virtualization. Matthias is currently helping to drive the Cisco automation strategy for enterprise networks (including DNA Center). Matthias also holds responsibilities in branch virtualization and in the definition of the cloud exchange architecture. Prior to his role within ENB, Matthias was the lead TME architect for the Cisco ASR 1000 Series routers. He has also held positions in product management, and served as a product line manager for the Cisco 10000 Series routers. From 2000 to 2005, Matthias was a consulting systems engineer in the Deutsche Telekom account team with Cisco Germany. Matthias holds a PhD in Systems and Computer engineering from Carleton University, Canada, and an MSc in Operations Research & Information Systems from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. His technical interests are in the area of performance characterization of virtualized networks, high availability, and service chaining.

Simone Arena is a principal technical marketing engineer (TME) within the Cisco ENB team and is primarily focused on enterprise network architecture and on all things related to wireless and mobility. Simone is based in Italy and is a Cisco veteran, having joined Cisco in 1999. Throughout the years, Simone has covered multiple roles at Cisco, starting as a software engineer working with Catalyst switching platforms, to consulting system engineer in the field, to TME within different teams (Enterprise Solution Engineering, Wireless Business Unit, and now ENB).

Today Simone is the lead TME architect for DNA Wireless, and his time is split between helping customers and partners design the best solution that fits their needs and engineering and product management, trying to evolve and improve the products and solutions.

Simone is a Distinguished Speaker at Cisco Live and has spoken at Cisco Live events all over the world for several years. He consistently is rated as an excellent speaker by attendees for his deep technical knowledge and ability to impart this information in a meaningful way.

Besides wireless, Simone has two passions: his two daughters, Viola and Anita, and his hometown soccer team, Fiorentina.

In his spare time Simone enjoys listening to music, especially through his new tube amplifier (simply awesome!).

More information on Simone can be found on the Cisco Innovators website in the feature story “Cisco Innovators: Simone Arena,” at https://newsroom.cisco.com/feature-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1849095.